Thewirelessreport.com has so many questions on the Microsoft / Nortel partnership. Looks like I’m also waiting for them to come up with the solutions ASAP and it does not turn into vapourware since waiting for VISTA is already taking up a lot of my spare time…..Its like waiting paint dry for the full Vista launch !

With Microsoft and Nortel just announcing that they are going to be teaming up on a unified communications partnership, one has to wonder what Microsoft has to offer here. Can you make a phone call directly from an Outlook contact? Can you reply to an email via voice instead of an email reply?

The previous news :

Microsoft on June 26 outlined its “unified communications” strategy, which aims to seamlessly interconnect email, instant messaging, and cellular and VoIP (voice-over-IP) telephony, along with audio-, video-, and web-conferencing. Additionally, Motorola and LG-Nortel announced plans to develop fixed and mobile devices supporting the unified communications platform.

Microsoft says its unified communications strategy takes advantage of new features in Exchange Server that provide a “unified in-box experience,” along with a speech-based auto attendant that allows users to access communications from any phone.

If you are getting this message when you try to download t he new Vista Beta 2, then you might want to try an alternative site. - Windows Vista Torrent . MS is also giving some bull by saying the won’t increase the bandwidth.

The standard version of the software takes up 3.5 gigabytes of memory – equivalent to more than 800 digital songs on Apple’s iTunes service. A second version, designed for 64-bit machines, runs to 4.4 gigabytes and takes five and a half hours to download even on a fast cable or DSL connection, according to Microsoft.

Several technology bloggers reported an instant message conversation with a Microsoft representative, who was quoted as saying: “We are literally saying that if we increased our bandwidth any further there’s a possibility of taking down the internet – people might have problems with World Cup viewing, etc.”

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Wanna know why Microsoft is dragging its feet when it comes to the WPA2 support ? Read this article to find out…

When the IEEE ratified the 802.11i Wireless LAN security standard and the Wi-Fi Alliance subsequently began certifying a subset of 802.11i called WPA2, it seemed that enterprises with relatively current hardware would be able to quickly leverage the upgraded authentication, encryption and roaming capabilities afforded by the standard. Yet Microsoft has remained a stick in the mud, slow to fully adopt the standard for the Windows XP client and positively glacial for server-side management and configuration.

Last Friday, Microsoft announced that it has finished work on a version of Windows for high-performance computing (HPC) and make available evaluation copies to attendees of the company’s Tech Ed 2006 in Boston next week. They are setting to beat Linux/Unix Cluster systems.

According to IDC, the high-performance and technical computing (HPTC) market grew roughly 24 percent in 2005 to reach a record $9.2 billion in revenue.

With Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, which is being released to manufacturing this week, Microsoft aims to compete against Unix and Linux to run server clusters in compute-intensive environments, such as those running multiple simultaneous transactions or computations involving large amounts of data. Microsoft first announced plans to offer a server OS for HPC in May 2004. Initially the company said Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 would be made available late last year, but it then pushed back the release date until the first half of 2006. With its release to manufacturing Friday, the OS should reach customers by August, said John Borozan, group product manager for the Windows Server Division at Microsoft.